The Cutlass had a pine tree air freshener that had stopped smelling like pine sometime during the previous administration, just a gray cardboard triangle swinging from the mirror. Ray's hands sat at ten and two without being told. He passed the Sunoco and the storage place and the storage place that used to be a Sunoco. The road opened up a little past the overpass and he didn't slow down or speed up.
The clock said 2:14. He looked at his phone - no messages, the screen just showing his own face back at him - and then at the clock again, still 2:14. His right knee found the door panel and started in. The truck ahead ran the yellow and his foot moved before his head did, the Cutlass rolling through on red-turning-stale - the gray triangle swinging once.
The grain elevator came up on the left the way it always did, anonymous as a stop sign, except this time Ray's foot went easy on the gas without him deciding to. Two silvers, he thought. One the color of an old quarter, one closer to the inside of a sardine can - a single panel maybe twelve feet wide running floor to rafters. He craned his neck until the building was behind him and his shoulder was against the door glass. Nobody had told him that panel was there.
The Blinker Ticking at an Empty Intersection
The left blinker went on and the Cutlass drifted toward the center line and stopped there, both lanes empty, a crow on a fence post ten yards ahead with its back to him. The ticking filled the whole car. Ray's hand sat on the signal arm. The crow didn't move. He clicked it off, put his hands back at ten and two, and drove straight into the part of the afternoon that didn't have a name yet.
The gravel popped under the tires and the Cutlass settled and Ray noticed his left hand the way you notice a sound that has already stopped - it was just there - open on his corduroy thigh, palm up, the fingers slightly curled the way a hand gets when it isn't doing anything at all. The cornfield ran flat to the tree line, all stalk-stumps and pale dirt, a plastic bag caught on one of them maybe forty rows in - lifting and dropping. Ray looked at his hand. The engine idled. He left it there.
The porch light had been on since before he left. Ray set the coffee cup on the counter, still full, a thin skin on it the color of old manila, and stood there a moment with his jacket still buttoned. The hook by the door had a spare key on it, a grocery list from February - the loop of a bungee cord. He put the keys in his jacket pocket instead. The furnace kicked on and the house made its house sounds around him and he didn't take the jacket off.
The Sunday paper was still on the porch mat, rubber band on, damp at one corner from the morning. Ray picked it up and held it under his arm and walked back through the kitchen and set it on the table without taking the rubber band off. He sat down. The window over the sink showed the backyard in the last of the flat winter light, the birdbath with its inch of dark water, a single set of tracks across the snow that went to the fence and stopped. He watched to see if anything moved - and nothing did, and he kept watching anyway.
What the Open Hand Costs
The rubber band snapped when he finally pulled it off, and the two halves went different directions across the table. Ray left them there. He opened the paper to the middle and read the same paragraph about a city council vote three times without taking any of it in, the words sitting on top of each other, and then he set the section down and looked at the birdbath again - the dark circle of water, the snow around it going blue at the edges now. His shoulders had dropped at some point, though he couldn't have said when. The porch light clicked on outside, automatic, and lit up a square of the yard he hadn't been looking at.
Ray got up and ran the tap until it was cold and filled a glass and drank half of it standing at the sink - looking out at the porch light's square of yard, the birdbath, the tracks that still went nowhere. He set the glass down and it clinked against the faucet and the sound was very loud. The truck key was still in his jacket pocket. He put his hand in there and felt the teeth of it against his palm and then took his hand out empty and went and sat back down. The paper was still open to the same paragraph about the city council.
The porch light went out at some point and the yard disappeared and Ray didn't get up to turn it back on. He found the rubber band halves on the table and set them side by side, the two ends almost touching, the way you'd lay out something broken to see if it could be fixed. The furnace cycled off and the house got very quiet and he could hear the refrigerator for the first time - a low hum with a catch in it every few seconds, something he must have heard ten thousand times without hearing. He left the jacket on. Outside, past where the porch light had been, the birdbath held its dark inch of water in the dark, and the tracks in the snow went nowhere - and the snow kept going blue.
Disclaimer
This article is for general informational purposes only and doesn't constitute professional, financial, medical, or legal advice. Consult a qualified professional about your specific situation.
